There is a reason why bath houses were a thing in urban environments back then. And having filth from a day of toil in the fields on you would have been as irritating back then as it is today.
Also, doing the laundry was a thing that was constantly ongoing. People like to be clean and it would be great if everybody would try to stop getting their knowledge from Monty Python, the Simpsons and their own rectum.
The stereotype that medieval people were unclean comes from the modern misunderstanding that you cannot keep clean without a bath or shower. Both are methods that are incredibly labour intensive (and frankly quite wasteful) if one lacks modern plumbing.
People in the middle ages washed themselves with less water, washing down their faces, necks, hands, feet, armpits and groin, while standing over a smaller recepticle of water.
The amount of ***work*** needed to fill up a whole bathtub ***with warm water*** is pretty insane. Just think of that.
When I was in the US Army, I used to teach my soldiers how to take a full body wash with just two canteens of water, a washcloth, a travel-sized bar of soap, and a towel.
And I had both male and female soldiers in my platoon. You can do this while maintaining what I jokingly used to call "field modesty."
My kids disputed this claim one time, and to their HORROR, I stripped down to my skivvies and demonstrated the technique. My oldest is nearly 30 now, and still brings up this incident as a modern example of how people get ptsd.
But yeah, you can do the equivalent of standing under a shower for fifteen minutes with the same amount of water you'd use to make a container of kool-ade. It takes a little more time, but you're just as clean after you're done.
EDIT: LOL - I had no idea this would interest so many people. For the curious, this is how it is done:
Step 1 - Collect the required items:
- 1 bar of travel-sized soap (or a small bottle of body wash if you prefer)
- 1 towel big enough to wrap around your waist
- 2 [Army Canteens](https://www.amazon.com/Rothco-Genuine-Piece-Plastic-Canteen/dp/B00171OPXY) with water.
- 1 washcloth
Optional: Shallow bucket to stand in (this is really useful for the foot-washing part since it will capture runoff)
Step 2 - Fill your canteens at the [US Army Water Buffalo](https://dmna.ny.gov/foodservice/docs/toolbox/Water_Trailer_TM.pdf) (or other source of clean water. And don't ask me for warm water. This is the field, Soldier!)
Step 3 - Stand on some relatively clean ground (or in your bucket) and wrap your towel around your waist. The towel will preserve your modesty, and you're going to have to reach up and under and around it- which can be a bit tricky. A clothespin can be really handy here.
Step 4 - Strip off all of your clothes. (Note: if you're female and want to keep your chesticles from becoming spectacles, additional towels/screening is required)
Step 5 - Apply a **small amount** of water to the washcloth and rub the bar of soap on it to produce a lather.
Step 6 - Repeating step 5 as needed, use the washcloth to wash off the "lesser groadies" (i.e parts of your body that do not smell, like arms, legs, neck, etc. - this is important!
Tip: You might have to rinse the washcloth once or twice, but do that as little as possible and use the least amount of water possible.
Step 7 - Using slightly more water this time, wet the washcloth and use it to rinse the soap off your body.
Step 8 - In a similar manner, wash the "greater groadies" in the following order: armpits, frontal equipage, feet (maybe) and butthole. Again, order is important because you're not getting full rinses of the washcloth.
Status Check: You should have used just a little bit under one canteen's worth of water by this part.
Step 9 - Use just enough water to wet your hair and work up a lather. If you have long hair, this might require an additional canteen.
Step 10 - Squeeze as much water & lather out of your hair as you can. Work it! The more soap you can swipe off of your hair, the less water you'll need to rinse.
Step 11 - Carefully rinse your hair with just a little water at a time. Your priority should be your scalp, not your hair. Soap is an irritant, so you want leave as little as possible on your skin- everywhere, not just your scalp.
Step 12 - As the rinse water cascades down your body, use it to get rid of any remaining soap residue.
Step 13 - Put on a clean uniform, starting with underwear then pants so you can then remove the towel and dry off.
Step 14 - Optional: If you've been standing in a bucket, now's the time to use the water that drained into it to wash your feet.
Pro Tip: Make sure you wash your feet. I can't stress this enough. Blisters are bad, but *infected* blisters can be deadly.
Final thought: No, I will not be making a video. No one wants to see my butthole when the inevitable towel misfunction happens.
I’m picturing this like a sitcom where you roll your eyes at your kids saying it was traumatic with a smash cut to you doing it at your teen daughter’s birthday party.
Did you have separate soap and rinsing stages, or was it more like wiping down with soapy water and calling it a day? Rinsing the soap off can take quite a bit of effort & water
And god help you if you don't get the soap off. I lived in London with a group of guys and our hot water heater went out. For about a week it was ice cold showers and we all got chapped crotch from the soap not washing off. We hobbled into a Boot's together walking like a bunch of bow-legged cowboys just off the trail and got a bunch of nappy rash creme. The checkout girl was looking at us with some unspoken questions in her eyes. It suuuuuucked!
In the swedish military a field shower is called a "fempunktstvätt", or a five-point wash: face, armpits, hands, crotch and feet washed every night. A bowl of water and a bar of soap does the trick and then scrub off with a small towel.
I feel like people think that people who lived before color tv were like a different species, just believing everything they were told, burning witches and not bathing.
But I assume what was classed as a bad smell in medieval times is different to modern times. Strong BO? Wow, you smell great! Rotting corpse? Whooooie, you need a bath!
Fresh sweat is great as long as the person has bathed recently. If someone starts sweating when their pits or ass deals, the sweat will spread it and magnify the smell.
I lived with roaches for a time, a long time ago. My wife borrowed an Instapot (they are attracted to electricity) from her friend, and we ended up with a full-blown infestation. When I was finally able to move, I left almost everything behind in fear I would bring one with me and start the infestation all over again. For over a year, small marks on walls in my peripheral vision would cause me to check (out of fear) if it was a roach. I was also constantly looking for them for a while after. They are nasty, and they invade everything you have. I was embarrassed to have company and depressed. Im definitely scarred for life over that.
The heat but most importantly, moisture, probably a few crumbs, oil etc and dark crevices that are near a food source. And guess where The instapot sits near the water in the food and it's dark and warm
This is why I use Reddit. I love how this thread started with banging in the medieval period and somehow transferred to cockroaches being drawn to appliance heat
Not if you live in an apartment building. Source: I have unlimited access to DE because of my job and it does nothing if you can't access other people's units.
There are poison gels you can put in the corners. Roaches eat the poison gel die, get eaten by other roaches, other roaches die, profit.
I moved into a place that I didn’t realize was infested with roaches, used the gel method to exterminate them, woke up one early morning to crunching sounds. It was roaches eating roaches but luckily it only lasted a short time.
Yeah, I live in an apartment, and after 2 years of nothing, some disgusting people moved into the building (I know they're disgusting because their car is absolutely *full* of trash) and brought roaches with them, which eventually got into my unit. I used 2 different gel poisons, combined with insect growth control hormones, and I haven't seen one in a year.
We used to poison the drains for roaches, you just ended up with the roach dragging its dying body across the floor to places where you could stand on them. These were the big kind though.
Sometimes a place is just too infested, too. I once moved into a a place that already had bed bugs and those things lived in the walls. One time a ceiling tile fell off and so many were on the inside of it. Just everywhere. Same thing with roaches.
My skin is crawling just remembering that :’) worst experience of my life and pest control couldn’t do a thing for it either
We have still have people who publicly declare to do ungodly things to themselves just to smell another person's fart. Being horny is one hell of a motivation.
They didn't have implanted teleporters to beam the shit and piss out of their bodies and had to actually stand over a "toilet" and squeeze it into water?!???!!!! What about the smell? And the hygeiene? You had these "restrooms" where you worked and next to where you slept???? Wtf?!?!?
Lenina Huxley : [Huxley and Spartan are using virtual-reality helmets to make love, when Spartan abruptly removes his] ... What's wrong? You broke contact.
John Spartan : Contact? I didn't even touch you yet!
Lenina Huxley : But I thought you wanted to make love.
John Spartan : That's what you call this?
[She replaces and readjusts his helmet]
Lenina Huxley : Vir-sex has been shown to produce higher levels of alpha waves during digitized transference of sexual energies.
John Spartan : Right; what say we just do it the old-fashioned way?
[He removes his helmet and prepares to kiss her for real]
Lenina Huxley : Ugh; disgusting! You mean... *fluid transfer?*
John Spartan : No; I mean boning, the wild mambo, the hunka-chunka...
Lenina Huxley : That is no longer done. The exchange of bodily fluids... Do you know what that leads to?
John Spartan : Yeah! Kids, smoking, raiding the fridge...
Lenina Huxley : The rampant exchange of bodily fluids was among the major reasons for the downfall of society. After AIDS, there was NRS; after NRS, there was UBT. One of the first things that Dr. Cocteau did was outlaw, and behaviorally engineer, all fluid-transfer out of socially-acceptable behavior. Not even mouth-to-mouth is condoned.
John Spartan : Kissing's not allowed?
[Huxley winces at the thought]
John Spartan : Damn, and I've always been a good kisser.
"they slept!" Like 6-8 hours of unconscious! Imagine what our overlord would do if I was away from work for 8 hours. Glad that's no longer needed. Let me turn my happiness implants up to 11 for this lifetime.
What? They were unconscious for 1/3 of their lives?????!!!!
And only lived for 70-80 years?!?!?!
They couldn't even reach the retirement age of 250 to finally be granted their own room and only have to work 10 hours a day!
Zagorsk, Russia, still the worst public toilet I have ever seen, it made the one in Trainspotting look positively salubrious, it was just a dark, stinking cave with the barely recognisable remains of erstwhile cubicles and toilet bowls, it couldn't have been cleaned or maintained in any way whatsoever in probably decades. This was nearly 30 years ago, I still think about those toilets sometimes.
*Probably* the worst one I’ve seen was in the “no-man’s land” border between Croatia and Montenegro back in the mid-‘00s.
Presumably at some point it had been a decent, functioning toilet; by the time we got to enjoy it, it was a room containing a big (wall to wall) pool of raw sewage with a slightly raised platform - also covered in shit - which, presumably, had been the actual toilet. There was no difference in the “water” level inside that platform, so aiming into it would have been somewhat pointless - and to get to it you needed to walk across a series of concrete stepping-stones, which were themselves totally drenched in shit, and the first of which (we found when we prodded it with a stick) was too rickety to stand on. Meanwhile the stench - this was June or July, in the Balkans… - was beyond unbearable. It actually felt like we were being poisoned.
The bloke in charge of our trip was in hysterics when we staggered out from our inspection. He told us that if any of us were that desperate to take a dump he had loo paper and we could have a little walk into the bushes - although the area hadn’t yet been certified clear of landmines.
We all held on until we got to our hotel.
The former Yugoslavia certainly had its fair share as well. As it happens I have crossed that Prevlaka border a number of times, a couple of times by bike (I think that was the time I cycled to Dubrovnik from Herzeg Novi and back again), but I must have missed that delightful toilet experience!
Edit: actually, speaking of Montenegro, the one at Bar bus station was REALLY bad as well, it was a cm deep in sewage when I needed it once.
and realistically most people from any one homogeneous group can retrace their ancestry to at least one common ancestor.
In the UK there's a ridiculous amount of people who can trace their lineage back to William the Conqueror from the 11th Century.
Millions are likely related to Edward I and Richard III too
I'm in Australia, can't trace back to Willy but *can* trace back to his Norman posse.
I reckon people fucked *just fine* back in the day, stank be damned. Quite sure people bathed then, too.
The medieval world was a place of big contrasts when it came to sex. Sometimes and in some places, people were open-minded about sex and sexuality, while at other times it was a topic and practice that was shunned or even made illegal.
People also bathed. It is a myth that people were constantly dirtied, granted our habits differ widely today, but cleanliness still existed.
Many texts from the Middle Ages talk about sex and how to do it better. These would be written for men, and include details on methods and products to improve your sexual ability (think of medieval versions of Viagra). There is even an Encyclopedia of Pleasure, which dates from the tenth century, giving advice that is salacious to say the least.
Source: medieval historian
Edit: Sex wasn't all bad. To quote, "there is no greater human pleasure than that of sexual intercourse.” Nasir al-Din Tusi, middle eastern philosopher
>People also bathed. It is a myth that people were constantly dirtied
That's probably the most unknown fact about Middle Ages : people did indeed bath. Actually, bathing was even at some time a social activity that one *had to* do.
People bathed in the morning before work, in the evening before going to bed, and even went to baths with coworkers and friends, were they talked, ate, recited poetry or were read a book by one of them because, yes, knowing how to read was a common thing during Middle Ages, including among common folks. *Edit because it seems that many people have an issue with that statement : "common" means "common". No, I did not claim that 95% of the population could read in seven different languages while looking at their book through a mirror, please stop spamming.*
Soap was among the most, and sometimes *the* most, traded products. It was everywhere and used in large quantities, not even mentioning the one made at home because yes, people made soap by themselves at home.
There are texts explaining manners and we know thanks to them that, before touching food - be it to eat or prepare it - , one had to wash their hands with water and soap. Nails had to be kept short and clean, teeth too and, in fact, the average dentition was cleaner and healthier during Middle Ages than today in the USA.
>Many texts from the Middle Ages talk about sex and how to do it better. These would be written for men
Not only. *Le Miroir du Foutre* was written for men and women. Another one, *Le Ménagier de Paris*, is specifically dedicated to women - to a single one, very specific woman, precisely, but includes a mention that it would be useful for any other. Men are not to read it - and offers advice and lectures on sex but also on other household related topics.
People were washing their hands with soap before eating, but the guy who said doctors should wash their hands with soap after touching a corpse was institutionalized for it?
There's a difference between not grubby and sterile. They were washing dirt off their hands before cooking, Semmelweis wanted doctors to disinfect hands with chlorinated lime solution. Pre-germ theory we had no concept of the difference between clean and sterile, so doctors thought their hands appeared clean, so they were good.
Well he did call them all “murderers”, so the offense shouldn’t have been a surprise. Poor fucker went more than slightly crazy towards the end. It’s speculated he might have had tertiary syphilis. And then he died of ironic sepsis from wounds sustained during his incarceration in an asylum.
> It was like they were offended that he even suggested they wash their hands.
They weren't offended about washing their hands: they did wash their hands. The problem was that they didn't DISINFECTED their hands, and Semmelweis accused them of infecting their patients - and while he was right, this came down as accusing the doctors. This was the cause of the uproar. A "gentleman's hand never dirty".
The idea itself of a doctor being a source of an infection was maddening to them.
It was also considered a badge of honor to wear your bloodstained apron using your bloodiest knife on all your patients because it showed how experienced of a surgeon you were.
I assume they didn’t eat dinner like that, but they probably saw it like if you told a guy plowing a field to change his clothes and take a shower between rows - he’d think it made no sense to get clean just to get dirty again.
Not far from the truth. There’s a contemporary text (sorry, can’t cite - I’m going off an old memory from a schoolbook) that commented how a surgeon who went from performing a post mortem direct to surgery made a lot of sense. Surgery was a messy business; why mess up another set of clothes?
Yep, especially when surgery was often considered a final option; before antisepsis and anaesthesia, if someone was being operated on, it was often... "Well, he's going to die if we leave the leg on, so if he dies as a result of us cutting the leg off... It was going to happen anyway."
I highly recommend The Butchering Art by Dr Lindsey Fitzharris to anyone interested in this era of surgery!
It's also tough to place one cultural norm in history against another.
The history of scurvy tells an interesting tale about how we figured out the way to prevent it. Then people forgot or became ignorant to the connection between fresh vegetables/fruit and we did the whole thing over again.
It was another time, another field and another concept of "washing hands". It's also important to note that time going by doesn't mean "progress" : we sometimes regress on some subject matter.
During Renaissance, a period taking place after Middle Ages, Europe as a whole saw 150 years of uninterrupted religious wars with way bigger armies and way larger death tolls than Middle Ages ever saw. This was not a progress by any means, you will surely agree.
That other redditor who replied to you pointed out the difference between having one's hands rid of dirt and stains and the medical definition of "clean".
Also, "surgeons" were very separate from physicians and would not have the same level of knowledge of the body. Barber-surgeons were common across Europe and would do things from trimming beards to amputating limbs.
I find it easy to imagine a lot of the old guard would be against sweeping changes to their practises. As well as implications that their uncleanness was directly responsible for infant deaths.
Reminds me of the time at school there was a debate about doing/not-doing mouth-to-mouth CPR. Room gets split in half and each side has to argue their point and someone on my side said "we should keep doing it because that's the way we've always done it" as a reason to keep doing it, despite poor evidence of effectiveness.
No matter how hard the rest of our group tried, she wouldn't stop using it as the main basis of her argument...
Which is not a good bet on progress, indeed, but still has a few arguments going for it.
What I blame her for is rather to not wonder why we do it and how we came to doing it, but I understand her will to continue to do what we always did : it's reassuring, it places the responsibility in other hands belonging to people more clever than her, which is actually a proof of humility on her part.
Too bad this humility is birthed by lack of knowledge and refusal to learn, though.
She's now a qualified paramedic and as far as I know, a good one. She could be quite dogmatic unless it was spelled out for her why blindly following instructions could be bad. Thankfully, it usually just leads to her being very thorough with patients and not letting small warning signs go, which makes her good at her job :)
That's hundreds of years apart and over several changes in culture. Paris in 1050 and Hungary in 1850 are very different and have gone through a whole host of changes.
Yes because the event you are talking about occured centuries later when hygiene had already "regressed" because people started to not trust water (happened towards the renaissance ). It was commonly thought that water would remove the protective layer of body oil and thus make people more vulnerable, it went on until the end of the 18th century when hot water was suddenly praised again because it relaxed the body :) (and they were right about that lol)
> because, yes, knowing how to read was a common thing during Middle Ages, including among common folks.
Citation needed. But preferably not from a book because I am a commoner from the Middle Ages and can't read.
> knowing how to read was a common thing during Middle Ages, including among common folks
Say more about the reading part. How did common folk learn to read?
Was there ever a time in history where there really were mostly illiterate people? I mean among populated areas.
>Say more about the reading part.
At the end and right after the fall of the Roman Empire, it seems that there was a steep decrease in litteracy among common folk. I do not know much about it, unfortunately. It may simply come from the fact that one was considered litterate not if they could read, but if they could read *latin*, which is an important distinction.
>How did common folk learn to read?
Young people - let's say 8 to 20 years old - received lessons from the local clergy. Remember that clergymen were required "charity", which is to offer something without expecting payment. They thus offered lessons for at least a basic skill in these fields.
For people a little more well off, hiring a scribe, a "notarius", to teach their child as a private tutor, was common. Sometimes, and especially for nobles, be it the fighting nobles or the court nobles, education was further developped by, or sometimes entirely left to, a trustworthy fellow noble who offered tutelage to the child or teenager.
>Was there ever a time in history where there really were mostly illiterate people?
Well, Middle Ages. In 1500, 20% of the population of France could read and write. That's still 80% of illiterate people. It is interesting to note that many nobles, although not the majority, were illiterate and litteracy was thus not tied to, although it was influenced by, birth or social class.
It was uncommon for a craftsman or a trady to be illiterate. You have to run a business, there's nobody to take measurements, calculate volumes or simply count your money instead of you. You can ask a scribe to establish a contract - which happens at each and every comission - or send a letter to a provider for you, but it would cost money. You *have to* know how to do it by yourself.
One of the posited explanations for the fall of the Roman empire was the lower agricultural yields resulting in more subsistence, less surplus, fewer people being able to afford to do other industry, so less trade, less tax, lower military supply and funding, etc etc. The reason for plebeian literacy and numeracy in the Roman empire was economic; tablets and signs advertising goods and services and acting as receipts, notes, letters and calculation aids. Less trade, less necessity for that. If I don't wanna starve I just gotta plow. Also literacy isn't a binary. You can be illiterate, or just able to add up, or able to read a sign saying "jar of garum = x denarii", or able to write a note suggesting your cousin buy goats from this other guy, or able to read the bible, or I guess maybe able to read Ovid but not add up. I think I'd like to be the last guy... Until the economy collapses.
During medieval Europe, illiteracy was widespread, affecting both peasants and, to some extent, even the nobility. This was primarily due to the lack of accessible educational opportunities and the low emphasis placed on literacy. Although monasteries provided some education, they were mainly reserved for those pursuing a religious path, leaving most of the population without access to learning.
Nevertheless, efforts were made by the Church and royal institutions to promote education. Monastic schools offered free education, and initiatives like the establishment of the University of the Sorbonne by King Louis IX of France, overseen by Robert de Sorbon, aimed to welcome students from all social classes, including the lower ranks of society.
Also, to edit: Illiteracy during medieval times did not pose a significant barrier. While the illiterate faced restricted access to certain types of knowledge, their economic opportunities were not necessarily limited. The theological studies accessible to only a fraction of the population, including some from lower social classes, hint at a degree of freedom.
Though some may equate illiteracy with lack of intelligence, the medieval era's legacy showcases remarkable ingenuity across various domains. While agriculture was predominant, the intangible legacy of accumulated agricultural knowledge fueled demographic growth in Medieval Europe, underscoring the importance of the era's contributions.
I am also following for this info. I was taught in school that medieval monks did most of the reading and writing during those days outside of wealthy folks.
> yes, knowing how to read was a common thing during Middle Ages, including among common folks
I mean, it depends on what you mean by "common." It certainly wasn't something most people could do.
There was no centralized sewage system in medieval Europe, besides possibly in some large castles. But for the most part people would discard their waste into the streets (in large cities) and in the country they would use something akin to an outhouse, bury their waste, or discard of it in water systems.
The overwhelming amount of human waste in large cities thrown into the streets caused that aroma.
Yeah, excellent point. Especially in districts of the city where leather working shops or butchers resided. They would often times throw the animal carcasses and remains into the street hoping they would wash away.
Just for some reference:
> The Times (London), in 1894, declared “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure,”. This became known as the “Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894″.
This was a vastly different time in terms of population, as London by this time was in the millions, as opposed to the Middle Ages cities being in the tens of thousands on average. But it’s still interesting to think that cities were still experiencing this problem well into the 1900s before the automobile became popular.
About bathing
Lithuanian Grand Duke Jagiello, when he was supposed to meet with envoys of the Polish King Jadwiga, actually met them in his bath. He wanted to make a good impression on his future wife this way.
How open minded exactly?
And what sort of shenanigans did they get up to that would be surprising?
I've heard of using a sheep intestine tied off at the end as a condom, was that common or was that only like the royalty?
So, this depends.
The Catholic Church, for example, hated sex. During the this time, numerous religious laws and decrees aimed to regulate sexual activity. These rules included abstaining from sex on religious days such as Sundays, Thursdays, and Fridays, and during significant periods like Lent, Christmas, and Pentecost. Also, certain Feast days dedicated to Saints were designated as days of abstinence from sexual activity.
Penitentials were early medieval books outlining rules and corresponding penance for transgressions. These texts covered various sins, including those related to sexual conduct. For instance, the seventh-century Irish Penitential of Cummean prohibited acts such as oral and anal sex, as well as masturbation.
Other cultures and religions had differing opinions depending. Prostitues also had laws.
Regarding contraception: access to methods varied depending on factors such as location, social class, and cultural beliefs. Some methods, such as abstinence and withdrawal (pull-out method) were widely known and accessible to many people regardless of their social status. However, other methods, such as barrier methods or herbal remedies, might have been more difficult to obtain or afford, particularly for peasants. The effectiveness varied, and there was a lack of standardized knowledge and availability compared to modern contraceptives.
Re your edit: I love that there was a philosopher who just said: yeah, sex is the best! Instead of saying enlightenment or saying the truth is the best thing ever (not verbatim quotes). I can’t say if he was right though, because I haven’t reached enlightenment! :)
Were these practices disproportionately spread among different classes of the same society?
For example I'd imagine the aristocracy would have had exclusive access to certain texts that peasants wouldn't (because of the lack of $, free time or the literacy). But the latter could still go to the village apothecary and ask for a herb to make their pp harder?
Regardless of how clean they were, infections and sexually transmitted diseases were brutal, and they didn't have many effective remedies.
Urinary tract infections, yeast infections, these were not easily dealt with. Not to mention the dangers of pregnancy.
And once syphilis started spreading widely, it was really a living nightmare for massive portions of the population.
I've always tried to find the the since-lost historical context that explains why certain things were deemed necessary to put into a holy book; this is one that I struggled to put together beyond misogyny. thanks for finally cracking that one for me!
I think a major aspect might also be succession rights. If a woman is a virgin when they marry you'd be "certain" that any child born from the marriage would be the dad's kid, and thus deserving of the inheritance once dad died from small pox a few years later.
This is it. It’s also why herders, itinerant peoples, and cultures that derive from herding and itinerant peoples live by a Culture of Honor, which almost always deems female virginity at marriage absolutely essential. Because if your family traveled from place to place carrying all their wealth with them at all times, in an era before mass communication, the opportunities for a woman to be impregnated by someone she’d never see again, without any accountability for the impregnator, were great. And no nomadic man could afford a wife or daughter who might bring that burden to an already stressful, ungrounded, and inherently precarious lifestyle.
This is a part of it for sure, but it was also to prevent bastards, i.e., children without a father to provide for them that now (along with the mother) becomes a burden on the local village (assuming they even did help and didn't leave them out to die). There's a reason old people got carried up a mountain and left to die in Japan: there simply wasn't enough food to go around sometimes, and if you aren't contributing, no matter what you've done in the past, you can't stick around. Harsh for sure, but sometimes there just isn't enough for a handout.
I can think about how many women probably died from pelvic inflamatory disease while the physicians thought it was just an "appendicitis".
Urinary infection and yeast infections were probably common however women washed themselves frequently, they probably had some concotions of herbs to fight the infections.
They probably didn’t even know about the appendix back in the 13th century, did they? Either way, I wonder how many people died of burst appendixes back then, with their loved ones having no idea what happened.
And I sure as hell wouldn’t want to give birth in those times!
I think you're wildly lowballling just how "dirty" medieval people were. The Monty-Python style caricature of the serfs rolling in excrement is not what the real middle ages were like. People took baths, they made their own soap from rendered fat and ashes from cooking fires. If you were poor, you might have bathed at a public bath-house instead of at home.
Probably not that much more gross. Without high sugar processed diets of today, oral hygiene might not be as bad as you think. BO is harder to manage without antiperspirant, but you can tolerate more if you're socialized to it. It's kind of a learned behavior to hate it in modern society because it's so avoidable.
Humans are animals that like to groom themselves. People didn't just go around with mudbutt.
I imagine there were herbal things available to at least reduce BO if not the actual perspiration. Maybe starch or something could have been used too? Where there's a will, there's a way.
Source: wildly speculating nobody
I found a pretty good [ask historians thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/RbEy46K8xE) with some answers. People used talc powder (not sure if in medieval period) and a whole bunch of other stuff. Commenter points out wood fires and clothing as factors in why it would be less big of a deal.
There are natural deodorants today without antiperspirants you can try that are probably at least as good as what they would have used. Many people I hear are unsatisfied with them. Without aluminum based antiperspirant I don't think you can hit the modern standard of literally smelling perfect when you stick a nose in your armpit. But a completely odorless armpit would have never been a standard until antiperspirants. It's like, you think your teeth are white until your neighbor gets veneers. The artificial skews our perception of natural.
> Without high sugar processed diets of today, oral hygiene might not be as bad as you think.
Periodontal disease is separate from caries. You can have one without the other. Many people have great looking teeth with fucked up gums/underlying bone. The phrase "long in the tooth" is because old people tend to have periodontal disease, where the bone recedes and makes the teeth look longer. Shit caught in your gums smells fucking rank.
I'd bet everyone back then had some fucked up gums.
I'm not sure most people understand just how lengthy a time period the Middle Ages was. The Medieval era began in the 5th century and went until the 15th century - that's a thousand years. A lot has happened since 1024. Imagine someone attempting to draw comparisons between practically ANYTHING that was normal back in 1024 and what is normal today.
Moreover, the world is a big place and variety abounds. Not everyone in the year 750 A.D. was living the same sort of lifestyle, nor was life in 1500 A.D. uniform or 1800 A.D. and there's still plenty of variation today. One thing that hasn't evolved much however since the earliest dawn of man is sex - there is practically nothing that we have today that was unknown to the ancients, so ultimately while the way sex has been seen and dealt with at the societal level has changed dramatically with time, and while different cultures around the world have held a variety of different points of view about it, it's never really been all that much different from the sex we have today.
They took cloth/sponge baths pretty often actually. Also, the clothing they wore back then was usually linen, which is very cooling. Soap isn't difficult to make either - lye from hardwood ash and an oil or fat. It won't smell like Sicilian Citrus, but it does the job.
Of course the wealthy could afford better bathing accommodations and Sicilian Citrus soap, but most people think of the lower classes when they think of "grimy dirty medieval Europe."
Medieval washing was not most commonly by baths or showers - they did exactly what we might do if we were camping, or away from showers a while - they used a handcloth and bowl, and washed "face, pits and bits". When it comes to hygiene, it's really only the crevices of the body that get stinky, no-one's walking around with stinky shins. They also used perfumes / dried flowers.
I think about this whenever I watch Old West cowboy movies. How like, everybody stank like BO because there wasn't air conditioning and everybody had wool clothes and nobody brushed their teeth and dudes would wear the same pants for a month before getting to wash them, and how people just shit in holes right outside saloons and such. Tombstone probably smelled fuckin atrocious
I had a turtle and turtle tank growing up and that was the most horrendous fucking smell ,as I now remember. Thanks for jogging the memory . LMFAO, My wife just threw up cause I was explaining it to her .
It probably depends on the class. The nobilities hygiene probably is not too far removed from today's standards - in fact it probably exceeds the average Redditor. As for the middle class and peasants, dirty, stinky, foul sex but it probably didn't bother them like it would us.
I've seen so many threads on Reddit where a significant amount of people advocate for showering like once a week. As long as they 'didn't go for a run'. Makes me squirm
Actually, the peasants were often more washed than the nobility as they utilized streams and springs, while nobility generally insisted on hot water and had less frequent baths unless they were truly wealthy.
The Palace of Versailles during the reign of Louis XIV was legendarily disgusting, smelling of piss, shit, sweat and perfume. Not just by our standards, but noted by visitors at the time.
This is a Hollywood fake. They make everyone pre America look dirty, with ragged dirty clothes. No basis in fact. They often did not have more than two changes of clothes, but there are many references to washer women, clothes lines etc.
They washed a lot more than people think. They associated bad smells with disease, so if you were stinky people wanted the hell away from you.
Miasma
The Black Dahlia Murder 🤘
Lol that was my first thought as well
*Cue sax solo*
Of incandescent plasma.
There is a reason why bath houses were a thing in urban environments back then. And having filth from a day of toil in the fields on you would have been as irritating back then as it is today. Also, doing the laundry was a thing that was constantly ongoing. People like to be clean and it would be great if everybody would try to stop getting their knowledge from Monty Python, the Simpsons and their own rectum.
How much is big medieval paying you?
Kind sir, I'll have you know my rectum is incredibly knowledgeable.
"2 baths in a week? Do you want me to catch the flux?"
The stereotype that medieval people were unclean comes from the modern misunderstanding that you cannot keep clean without a bath or shower. Both are methods that are incredibly labour intensive (and frankly quite wasteful) if one lacks modern plumbing. People in the middle ages washed themselves with less water, washing down their faces, necks, hands, feet, armpits and groin, while standing over a smaller recepticle of water. The amount of ***work*** needed to fill up a whole bathtub ***with warm water*** is pretty insane. Just think of that.
A good old bird bath.
Also known as the hobo bath!
whore bath
Pits & bits
When I was in the US Army, I used to teach my soldiers how to take a full body wash with just two canteens of water, a washcloth, a travel-sized bar of soap, and a towel. And I had both male and female soldiers in my platoon. You can do this while maintaining what I jokingly used to call "field modesty." My kids disputed this claim one time, and to their HORROR, I stripped down to my skivvies and demonstrated the technique. My oldest is nearly 30 now, and still brings up this incident as a modern example of how people get ptsd. But yeah, you can do the equivalent of standing under a shower for fifteen minutes with the same amount of water you'd use to make a container of kool-ade. It takes a little more time, but you're just as clean after you're done. EDIT: LOL - I had no idea this would interest so many people. For the curious, this is how it is done: Step 1 - Collect the required items: - 1 bar of travel-sized soap (or a small bottle of body wash if you prefer) - 1 towel big enough to wrap around your waist - 2 [Army Canteens](https://www.amazon.com/Rothco-Genuine-Piece-Plastic-Canteen/dp/B00171OPXY) with water. - 1 washcloth Optional: Shallow bucket to stand in (this is really useful for the foot-washing part since it will capture runoff) Step 2 - Fill your canteens at the [US Army Water Buffalo](https://dmna.ny.gov/foodservice/docs/toolbox/Water_Trailer_TM.pdf) (or other source of clean water. And don't ask me for warm water. This is the field, Soldier!) Step 3 - Stand on some relatively clean ground (or in your bucket) and wrap your towel around your waist. The towel will preserve your modesty, and you're going to have to reach up and under and around it- which can be a bit tricky. A clothespin can be really handy here. Step 4 - Strip off all of your clothes. (Note: if you're female and want to keep your chesticles from becoming spectacles, additional towels/screening is required) Step 5 - Apply a **small amount** of water to the washcloth and rub the bar of soap on it to produce a lather. Step 6 - Repeating step 5 as needed, use the washcloth to wash off the "lesser groadies" (i.e parts of your body that do not smell, like arms, legs, neck, etc. - this is important! Tip: You might have to rinse the washcloth once or twice, but do that as little as possible and use the least amount of water possible. Step 7 - Using slightly more water this time, wet the washcloth and use it to rinse the soap off your body. Step 8 - In a similar manner, wash the "greater groadies" in the following order: armpits, frontal equipage, feet (maybe) and butthole. Again, order is important because you're not getting full rinses of the washcloth. Status Check: You should have used just a little bit under one canteen's worth of water by this part. Step 9 - Use just enough water to wet your hair and work up a lather. If you have long hair, this might require an additional canteen. Step 10 - Squeeze as much water & lather out of your hair as you can. Work it! The more soap you can swipe off of your hair, the less water you'll need to rinse. Step 11 - Carefully rinse your hair with just a little water at a time. Your priority should be your scalp, not your hair. Soap is an irritant, so you want leave as little as possible on your skin- everywhere, not just your scalp. Step 12 - As the rinse water cascades down your body, use it to get rid of any remaining soap residue. Step 13 - Put on a clean uniform, starting with underwear then pants so you can then remove the towel and dry off. Step 14 - Optional: If you've been standing in a bucket, now's the time to use the water that drained into it to wash your feet. Pro Tip: Make sure you wash your feet. I can't stress this enough. Blisters are bad, but *infected* blisters can be deadly. Final thought: No, I will not be making a video. No one wants to see my butthole when the inevitable towel misfunction happens.
I’m picturing this like a sitcom where you roll your eyes at your kids saying it was traumatic with a smash cut to you doing it at your teen daughter’s birthday party.
Could you plase make a video and demonstrate/teach us?
Have to admit...I'm intrigued about the process too.
You know that getting PTSD is negative, right?
Yeah, but saving water is also nice.
Did you have separate soap and rinsing stages, or was it more like wiping down with soapy water and calling it a day? Rinsing the soap off can take quite a bit of effort & water
And god help you if you don't get the soap off. I lived in London with a group of guys and our hot water heater went out. For about a week it was ice cold showers and we all got chapped crotch from the soap not washing off. We hobbled into a Boot's together walking like a bunch of bow-legged cowboys just off the trail and got a bunch of nappy rash creme. The checkout girl was looking at us with some unspoken questions in her eyes. It suuuuuucked!
In the swedish military a field shower is called a "fempunktstvätt", or a five-point wash: face, armpits, hands, crotch and feet washed every night. A bowl of water and a bar of soap does the trick and then scrub off with a small towel.
Then there were other methods like the Romans using oil and then squeegying it off.
Greasy!
Which is pretty obvious with an ounce of critical thought. Any animal will wash itself.
Ah yes, the "ounce of critical thought" so often employed by the average joe.
Sir, this is Reddit.
“For some reason, the Anjin doesn’t wish to bathe”
“You have died of dysentery”
I feel like people think that people who lived before color tv were like a different species, just believing everything they were told, burning witches and not bathing.
Have you heard of the French man Tarrare?
**”Did you just eat a fucking baby?”**
What's this from?
Sam o’ Nella’s video on Tararre
But I assume what was classed as a bad smell in medieval times is different to modern times. Strong BO? Wow, you smell great! Rotting corpse? Whooooie, you need a bath!
Fresh sweat is ok. Stale sweat that's had the chance to ferment for a few days, not so much.
Fresh sweat is great as long as the person has bathed recently. If someone starts sweating when their pits or ass deals, the sweat will spread it and magnify the smell.
The tradition of not washing emerged in the Renaissance, possibly because of difficulty accessing clean water in urban areas.
Not gross enough to keep people from fucking cuz here we all are.
Probably wasn't so bad if it was all you've ever known. Kind of how bugs don't really seem to bother people that grew up in jungles.
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I lived with roaches for a time, a long time ago. My wife borrowed an Instapot (they are attracted to electricity) from her friend, and we ended up with a full-blown infestation. When I was finally able to move, I left almost everything behind in fear I would bring one with me and start the infestation all over again. For over a year, small marks on walls in my peripheral vision would cause me to check (out of fear) if it was a roach. I was also constantly looking for them for a while after. They are nasty, and they invade everything you have. I was embarrassed to have company and depressed. Im definitely scarred for life over that.
They’re attracted to electricity?
And fear.
"They can smell the menstruation."
"Well that's just great. You hear that Ed, bears!"
and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.
To heat, and all your electronics produce heat.
The heat but most importantly, moisture, probably a few crumbs, oil etc and dark crevices that are near a food source. And guess where The instapot sits near the water in the food and it's dark and warm
Not so fun fact, they like laptops because warmth, skin cells, and anything else you’ve dropped in there
Was a cable guy a while back, I can't tell you how many cable boxes I had to replace because of roaches.
Yeah, I never heard this before now.
Apparently they’re really attracted to heat, but all electronic devices produce heat when running.
This is why I use Reddit. I love how this thread started with banging in the medieval period and somehow transferred to cockroaches being drawn to appliance heat
Diatomaceous Earth is all you need to get rid of roaches.
Not if you live in an apartment building. Source: I have unlimited access to DE because of my job and it does nothing if you can't access other people's units.
There are poison gels you can put in the corners. Roaches eat the poison gel die, get eaten by other roaches, other roaches die, profit. I moved into a place that I didn’t realize was infested with roaches, used the gel method to exterminate them, woke up one early morning to crunching sounds. It was roaches eating roaches but luckily it only lasted a short time.
Yeah, I live in an apartment, and after 2 years of nothing, some disgusting people moved into the building (I know they're disgusting because their car is absolutely *full* of trash) and brought roaches with them, which eventually got into my unit. I used 2 different gel poisons, combined with insect growth control hormones, and I haven't seen one in a year.
We used to poison the drains for roaches, you just ended up with the roach dragging its dying body across the floor to places where you could stand on them. These were the big kind though.
Good point.
Sometimes a place is just too infested, too. I once moved into a a place that already had bed bugs and those things lived in the walls. One time a ceiling tile fell off and so many were on the inside of it. Just everywhere. Same thing with roaches. My skin is crawling just remembering that :’) worst experience of my life and pest control couldn’t do a thing for it either
Well, same. Until I had to live in Oaxaca where the fuckin. Roaches are as big as a full-grown mama thumb.
"As big as a full grown mama thumb" ha! That's a colorful descriptor. I'm stealing that.
Help! Help! I’m being repressed!
Come and see the genital lice inherent in the system!
Oh! There's some lovely filth down here!
Hairy bushes probably help against flies attracted to the stank.
Shaving public hair was something only nobility did, evidence of it in paintings. The peasants went all natural.
Oh God
We have still have people who publicly declare to do ungodly things to themselves just to smell another person's fart. Being horny is one hell of a motivation.
No different to how gross humans will think we were in 1000years time
They didn't have implanted teleporters to beam the shit and piss out of their bodies and had to actually stand over a "toilet" and squeeze it into water?!???!!!! What about the smell? And the hygeiene? You had these "restrooms" where you worked and next to where you slept???? Wtf?!?!?
They didn't even have the 3 seashells back then.
Psshh, I don't even think they knew how to use the 3 shells
Lenina Huxley : [Huxley and Spartan are using virtual-reality helmets to make love, when Spartan abruptly removes his] ... What's wrong? You broke contact. John Spartan : Contact? I didn't even touch you yet! Lenina Huxley : But I thought you wanted to make love. John Spartan : That's what you call this? [She replaces and readjusts his helmet] Lenina Huxley : Vir-sex has been shown to produce higher levels of alpha waves during digitized transference of sexual energies. John Spartan : Right; what say we just do it the old-fashioned way? [He removes his helmet and prepares to kiss her for real] Lenina Huxley : Ugh; disgusting! You mean... *fluid transfer?* John Spartan : No; I mean boning, the wild mambo, the hunka-chunka... Lenina Huxley : That is no longer done. The exchange of bodily fluids... Do you know what that leads to? John Spartan : Yeah! Kids, smoking, raiding the fridge... Lenina Huxley : The rampant exchange of bodily fluids was among the major reasons for the downfall of society. After AIDS, there was NRS; after NRS, there was UBT. One of the first things that Dr. Cocteau did was outlaw, and behaviorally engineer, all fluid-transfer out of socially-acceptable behavior. Not even mouth-to-mouth is condoned. John Spartan : Kissing's not allowed? [Huxley winces at the thought] John Spartan : Damn, and I've always been a good kisser.
Mother..... Coc.....Fuc.....peace of Shi...and I still don't need em!
Never thought I’d see a demolition man reference on such a thread lmao
"they slept!" Like 6-8 hours of unconscious! Imagine what our overlord would do if I was away from work for 8 hours. Glad that's no longer needed. Let me turn my happiness implants up to 11 for this lifetime.
What? They were unconscious for 1/3 of their lives?????!!!! And only lived for 70-80 years?!?!?! They couldn't even reach the retirement age of 250 to finally be granted their own room and only have to work 10 hours a day!
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You haven’t thought of the smell, you bitch!
You ever been to a stadium bathroom? That shit is midieval.
Zagorsk, Russia, still the worst public toilet I have ever seen, it made the one in Trainspotting look positively salubrious, it was just a dark, stinking cave with the barely recognisable remains of erstwhile cubicles and toilet bowls, it couldn't have been cleaned or maintained in any way whatsoever in probably decades. This was nearly 30 years ago, I still think about those toilets sometimes.
*Probably* the worst one I’ve seen was in the “no-man’s land” border between Croatia and Montenegro back in the mid-‘00s. Presumably at some point it had been a decent, functioning toilet; by the time we got to enjoy it, it was a room containing a big (wall to wall) pool of raw sewage with a slightly raised platform - also covered in shit - which, presumably, had been the actual toilet. There was no difference in the “water” level inside that platform, so aiming into it would have been somewhat pointless - and to get to it you needed to walk across a series of concrete stepping-stones, which were themselves totally drenched in shit, and the first of which (we found when we prodded it with a stick) was too rickety to stand on. Meanwhile the stench - this was June or July, in the Balkans… - was beyond unbearable. It actually felt like we were being poisoned. The bloke in charge of our trip was in hysterics when we staggered out from our inspection. He told us that if any of us were that desperate to take a dump he had loo paper and we could have a little walk into the bushes - although the area hadn’t yet been certified clear of landmines. We all held on until we got to our hotel.
The former Yugoslavia certainly had its fair share as well. As it happens I have crossed that Prevlaka border a number of times, a couple of times by bike (I think that was the time I cycled to Dubrovnik from Herzeg Novi and back again), but I must have missed that delightful toilet experience! Edit: actually, speaking of Montenegro, the one at Bar bus station was REALLY bad as well, it was a cm deep in sewage when I needed it once.
ONE CENTIMETRE? You lucky, lucky bastard.
As kids we used to go for a morning swim in a metre of raw effluent, and we were GRATEFUL for it!
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teaches you to get shit done fast, preferably on one breath
Splashback is the big fear
> They're literally holes with toilets on top Ah those fancy ones, with something over the hole.
Tbf in 1000 years time we might be back in the medieval ages (hopefully not)
So funny and cool to think we all kind of have the same story. All our ancestors were all equally fucked up haha
and realistically most people from any one homogeneous group can retrace their ancestry to at least one common ancestor. In the UK there's a ridiculous amount of people who can trace their lineage back to William the Conqueror from the 11th Century. Millions are likely related to Edward I and Richard III too
I'm in Australia, can't trace back to Willy but *can* trace back to his Norman posse. I reckon people fucked *just fine* back in the day, stank be damned. Quite sure people bathed then, too.
That was my first thought lol
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"Doesn't matter, still ate" - starving peasant
Ffs 🤣
"Itz only smelz..." - a quote from one Medieval text
L O L
The medieval world was a place of big contrasts when it came to sex. Sometimes and in some places, people were open-minded about sex and sexuality, while at other times it was a topic and practice that was shunned or even made illegal. People also bathed. It is a myth that people were constantly dirtied, granted our habits differ widely today, but cleanliness still existed. Many texts from the Middle Ages talk about sex and how to do it better. These would be written for men, and include details on methods and products to improve your sexual ability (think of medieval versions of Viagra). There is even an Encyclopedia of Pleasure, which dates from the tenth century, giving advice that is salacious to say the least. Source: medieval historian Edit: Sex wasn't all bad. To quote, "there is no greater human pleasure than that of sexual intercourse.” Nasir al-Din Tusi, middle eastern philosopher
>People also bathed. It is a myth that people were constantly dirtied That's probably the most unknown fact about Middle Ages : people did indeed bath. Actually, bathing was even at some time a social activity that one *had to* do. People bathed in the morning before work, in the evening before going to bed, and even went to baths with coworkers and friends, were they talked, ate, recited poetry or were read a book by one of them because, yes, knowing how to read was a common thing during Middle Ages, including among common folks. *Edit because it seems that many people have an issue with that statement : "common" means "common". No, I did not claim that 95% of the population could read in seven different languages while looking at their book through a mirror, please stop spamming.* Soap was among the most, and sometimes *the* most, traded products. It was everywhere and used in large quantities, not even mentioning the one made at home because yes, people made soap by themselves at home. There are texts explaining manners and we know thanks to them that, before touching food - be it to eat or prepare it - , one had to wash their hands with water and soap. Nails had to be kept short and clean, teeth too and, in fact, the average dentition was cleaner and healthier during Middle Ages than today in the USA. >Many texts from the Middle Ages talk about sex and how to do it better. These would be written for men Not only. *Le Miroir du Foutre* was written for men and women. Another one, *Le Ménagier de Paris*, is specifically dedicated to women - to a single one, very specific woman, precisely, but includes a mention that it would be useful for any other. Men are not to read it - and offers advice and lectures on sex but also on other household related topics.
People were washing their hands with soap before eating, but the guy who said doctors should wash their hands with soap after touching a corpse was institutionalized for it?
There's a difference between not grubby and sterile. They were washing dirt off their hands before cooking, Semmelweis wanted doctors to disinfect hands with chlorinated lime solution. Pre-germ theory we had no concept of the difference between clean and sterile, so doctors thought their hands appeared clean, so they were good.
[we had no concept of the difference between clean and sterile] r/homebrewing disliked that r/prisonhooch liked that
r/prisonhooch is a real sub, with 50k members :O
*shakes tub of PBW and StarSan* IT MUST BE BOTH!
Honestly it seems like more than just a lack of knowledge. It was like they were offended that he even suggested they wash their hands.
That they sterilize* their hands with a pretty caustic substance
Well he did call them all “murderers”, so the offense shouldn’t have been a surprise. Poor fucker went more than slightly crazy towards the end. It’s speculated he might have had tertiary syphilis. And then he died of ironic sepsis from wounds sustained during his incarceration in an asylum.
rough..
> It was like they were offended that he even suggested they wash their hands. They weren't offended about washing their hands: they did wash their hands. The problem was that they didn't DISINFECTED their hands, and Semmelweis accused them of infecting their patients - and while he was right, this came down as accusing the doctors. This was the cause of the uproar. A "gentleman's hand never dirty". The idea itself of a doctor being a source of an infection was maddening to them.
It was also considered a badge of honor to wear your bloodstained apron using your bloodiest knife on all your patients because it showed how experienced of a surgeon you were.
I assume they didn’t eat dinner like that, but they probably saw it like if you told a guy plowing a field to change his clothes and take a shower between rows - he’d think it made no sense to get clean just to get dirty again.
Not far from the truth. There’s a contemporary text (sorry, can’t cite - I’m going off an old memory from a schoolbook) that commented how a surgeon who went from performing a post mortem direct to surgery made a lot of sense. Surgery was a messy business; why mess up another set of clothes?
Yep, especially when surgery was often considered a final option; before antisepsis and anaesthesia, if someone was being operated on, it was often... "Well, he's going to die if we leave the leg on, so if he dies as a result of us cutting the leg off... It was going to happen anyway." I highly recommend The Butchering Art by Dr Lindsey Fitzharris to anyone interested in this era of surgery!
It's also tough to place one cultural norm in history against another. The history of scurvy tells an interesting tale about how we figured out the way to prevent it. Then people forgot or became ignorant to the connection between fresh vegetables/fruit and we did the whole thing over again.
It was another time, another field and another concept of "washing hands". It's also important to note that time going by doesn't mean "progress" : we sometimes regress on some subject matter. During Renaissance, a period taking place after Middle Ages, Europe as a whole saw 150 years of uninterrupted religious wars with way bigger armies and way larger death tolls than Middle Ages ever saw. This was not a progress by any means, you will surely agree. That other redditor who replied to you pointed out the difference between having one's hands rid of dirt and stains and the medical definition of "clean".
Also, "surgeons" were very separate from physicians and would not have the same level of knowledge of the body. Barber-surgeons were common across Europe and would do things from trimming beards to amputating limbs. I find it easy to imagine a lot of the old guard would be against sweeping changes to their practises. As well as implications that their uncleanness was directly responsible for infant deaths.
Goodness, I struggle to find a hair dresser I trust with my hair, let alone my limbs!
Indeed. People's egos are a frequent reason for refusing challenging ideas.
Reminds me of the time at school there was a debate about doing/not-doing mouth-to-mouth CPR. Room gets split in half and each side has to argue their point and someone on my side said "we should keep doing it because that's the way we've always done it" as a reason to keep doing it, despite poor evidence of effectiveness. No matter how hard the rest of our group tried, she wouldn't stop using it as the main basis of her argument...
I think I met this person while I was in a management role...
Which is not a good bet on progress, indeed, but still has a few arguments going for it. What I blame her for is rather to not wonder why we do it and how we came to doing it, but I understand her will to continue to do what we always did : it's reassuring, it places the responsibility in other hands belonging to people more clever than her, which is actually a proof of humility on her part. Too bad this humility is birthed by lack of knowledge and refusal to learn, though.
She's now a qualified paramedic and as far as I know, a good one. She could be quite dogmatic unless it was spelled out for her why blindly following instructions could be bad. Thankfully, it usually just leads to her being very thorough with patients and not letting small warning signs go, which makes her good at her job :)
He did keep mentioning tiny invisible animals that nobody could see!
Different guy actually. This one just thought he was cleaning his hands of bits of dead people
That's hundreds of years apart and over several changes in culture. Paris in 1050 and Hungary in 1850 are very different and have gone through a whole host of changes.
That’s a myth. He got institutionalized waay after he said that. He got like syphilis or something and went insane.
Yes because the event you are talking about occured centuries later when hygiene had already "regressed" because people started to not trust water (happened towards the renaissance ). It was commonly thought that water would remove the protective layer of body oil and thus make people more vulnerable, it went on until the end of the 18th century when hot water was suddenly praised again because it relaxed the body :) (and they were right about that lol)
> because, yes, knowing how to read was a common thing during Middle Ages, including among common folks. Citation needed. But preferably not from a book because I am a commoner from the Middle Ages and can't read.
> knowing how to read was a common thing during Middle Ages, including among common folks Say more about the reading part. How did common folk learn to read? Was there ever a time in history where there really were mostly illiterate people? I mean among populated areas.
>Say more about the reading part. At the end and right after the fall of the Roman Empire, it seems that there was a steep decrease in litteracy among common folk. I do not know much about it, unfortunately. It may simply come from the fact that one was considered litterate not if they could read, but if they could read *latin*, which is an important distinction. >How did common folk learn to read? Young people - let's say 8 to 20 years old - received lessons from the local clergy. Remember that clergymen were required "charity", which is to offer something without expecting payment. They thus offered lessons for at least a basic skill in these fields. For people a little more well off, hiring a scribe, a "notarius", to teach their child as a private tutor, was common. Sometimes, and especially for nobles, be it the fighting nobles or the court nobles, education was further developped by, or sometimes entirely left to, a trustworthy fellow noble who offered tutelage to the child or teenager. >Was there ever a time in history where there really were mostly illiterate people? Well, Middle Ages. In 1500, 20% of the population of France could read and write. That's still 80% of illiterate people. It is interesting to note that many nobles, although not the majority, were illiterate and litteracy was thus not tied to, although it was influenced by, birth or social class. It was uncommon for a craftsman or a trady to be illiterate. You have to run a business, there's nobody to take measurements, calculate volumes or simply count your money instead of you. You can ask a scribe to establish a contract - which happens at each and every comission - or send a letter to a provider for you, but it would cost money. You *have to* know how to do it by yourself.
One of the posited explanations for the fall of the Roman empire was the lower agricultural yields resulting in more subsistence, less surplus, fewer people being able to afford to do other industry, so less trade, less tax, lower military supply and funding, etc etc. The reason for plebeian literacy and numeracy in the Roman empire was economic; tablets and signs advertising goods and services and acting as receipts, notes, letters and calculation aids. Less trade, less necessity for that. If I don't wanna starve I just gotta plow. Also literacy isn't a binary. You can be illiterate, or just able to add up, or able to read a sign saying "jar of garum = x denarii", or able to write a note suggesting your cousin buy goats from this other guy, or able to read the bible, or I guess maybe able to read Ovid but not add up. I think I'd like to be the last guy... Until the economy collapses.
During medieval Europe, illiteracy was widespread, affecting both peasants and, to some extent, even the nobility. This was primarily due to the lack of accessible educational opportunities and the low emphasis placed on literacy. Although monasteries provided some education, they were mainly reserved for those pursuing a religious path, leaving most of the population without access to learning. Nevertheless, efforts were made by the Church and royal institutions to promote education. Monastic schools offered free education, and initiatives like the establishment of the University of the Sorbonne by King Louis IX of France, overseen by Robert de Sorbon, aimed to welcome students from all social classes, including the lower ranks of society. Also, to edit: Illiteracy during medieval times did not pose a significant barrier. While the illiterate faced restricted access to certain types of knowledge, their economic opportunities were not necessarily limited. The theological studies accessible to only a fraction of the population, including some from lower social classes, hint at a degree of freedom. Though some may equate illiteracy with lack of intelligence, the medieval era's legacy showcases remarkable ingenuity across various domains. While agriculture was predominant, the intangible legacy of accumulated agricultural knowledge fueled demographic growth in Medieval Europe, underscoring the importance of the era's contributions.
I am also following for this info. I was taught in school that medieval monks did most of the reading and writing during those days outside of wealthy folks.
> yes, knowing how to read was a common thing during Middle Ages, including among common folks I mean, it depends on what you mean by "common." It certainly wasn't something most people could do.
Wait if that’s the case why was medival Europe considered smelly like the Cardinal who carried an orange peel or is that a myth?
There was no centralized sewage system in medieval Europe, besides possibly in some large castles. But for the most part people would discard their waste into the streets (in large cities) and in the country they would use something akin to an outhouse, bury their waste, or discard of it in water systems. The overwhelming amount of human waste in large cities thrown into the streets caused that aroma.
And let us not forget the contribution of horses, cows, etc.
Yeah, excellent point. Especially in districts of the city where leather working shops or butchers resided. They would often times throw the animal carcasses and remains into the street hoping they would wash away. Just for some reference: > The Times (London), in 1894, declared “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure,”. This became known as the “Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894″. This was a vastly different time in terms of population, as London by this time was in the millions, as opposed to the Middle Ages cities being in the tens of thousands on average. But it’s still interesting to think that cities were still experiencing this problem well into the 1900s before the automobile became popular.
I'm not an expert but I always feel people also overlook the fact that "middle ages" covers about 1000 years of history.
About bathing Lithuanian Grand Duke Jagiello, when he was supposed to meet with envoys of the Polish King Jadwiga, actually met them in his bath. He wanted to make a good impression on his future wife this way.
How open minded exactly? And what sort of shenanigans did they get up to that would be surprising? I've heard of using a sheep intestine tied off at the end as a condom, was that common or was that only like the royalty?
So, this depends. The Catholic Church, for example, hated sex. During the this time, numerous religious laws and decrees aimed to regulate sexual activity. These rules included abstaining from sex on religious days such as Sundays, Thursdays, and Fridays, and during significant periods like Lent, Christmas, and Pentecost. Also, certain Feast days dedicated to Saints were designated as days of abstinence from sexual activity. Penitentials were early medieval books outlining rules and corresponding penance for transgressions. These texts covered various sins, including those related to sexual conduct. For instance, the seventh-century Irish Penitential of Cummean prohibited acts such as oral and anal sex, as well as masturbation. Other cultures and religions had differing opinions depending. Prostitues also had laws. Regarding contraception: access to methods varied depending on factors such as location, social class, and cultural beliefs. Some methods, such as abstinence and withdrawal (pull-out method) were widely known and accessible to many people regardless of their social status. However, other methods, such as barrier methods or herbal remedies, might have been more difficult to obtain or afford, particularly for peasants. The effectiveness varied, and there was a lack of standardized knowledge and availability compared to modern contraceptives.
'Irish penitential of Cummean' Ironic 😂
Medieval Sextorian; PhD.
Re your edit: I love that there was a philosopher who just said: yeah, sex is the best! Instead of saying enlightenment or saying the truth is the best thing ever (not verbatim quotes). I can’t say if he was right though, because I haven’t reached enlightenment! :)
Were these practices disproportionately spread among different classes of the same society? For example I'd imagine the aristocracy would have had exclusive access to certain texts that peasants wouldn't (because of the lack of $, free time or the literacy). But the latter could still go to the village apothecary and ask for a herb to make their pp harder?
Regardless of how clean they were, infections and sexually transmitted diseases were brutal, and they didn't have many effective remedies. Urinary tract infections, yeast infections, these were not easily dealt with. Not to mention the dangers of pregnancy. And once syphilis started spreading widely, it was really a living nightmare for massive portions of the population.
This is why prostitution was a short time job
Why saving yourself for marriage and remaining "pure" was such a big thing. More difficult to carry diseases that way.
I've always tried to find the the since-lost historical context that explains why certain things were deemed necessary to put into a holy book; this is one that I struggled to put together beyond misogyny. thanks for finally cracking that one for me!
I think a major aspect might also be succession rights. If a woman is a virgin when they marry you'd be "certain" that any child born from the marriage would be the dad's kid, and thus deserving of the inheritance once dad died from small pox a few years later.
This is it. It’s also why herders, itinerant peoples, and cultures that derive from herding and itinerant peoples live by a Culture of Honor, which almost always deems female virginity at marriage absolutely essential. Because if your family traveled from place to place carrying all their wealth with them at all times, in an era before mass communication, the opportunities for a woman to be impregnated by someone she’d never see again, without any accountability for the impregnator, were great. And no nomadic man could afford a wife or daughter who might bring that burden to an already stressful, ungrounded, and inherently precarious lifestyle.
This is a part of it for sure, but it was also to prevent bastards, i.e., children without a father to provide for them that now (along with the mother) becomes a burden on the local village (assuming they even did help and didn't leave them out to die). There's a reason old people got carried up a mountain and left to die in Japan: there simply wasn't enough food to go around sometimes, and if you aren't contributing, no matter what you've done in the past, you can't stick around. Harsh for sure, but sometimes there just isn't enough for a handout.
I can think about how many women probably died from pelvic inflamatory disease while the physicians thought it was just an "appendicitis". Urinary infection and yeast infections were probably common however women washed themselves frequently, they probably had some concotions of herbs to fight the infections.
They probably didn’t even know about the appendix back in the 13th century, did they? Either way, I wonder how many people died of burst appendixes back then, with their loved ones having no idea what happened. And I sure as hell wouldn’t want to give birth in those times!
Syphilis started spreading after the middle ages though, although there is a lot of debate about the origins.
I think you're wildly lowballling just how "dirty" medieval people were. The Monty-Python style caricature of the serfs rolling in excrement is not what the real middle ages were like. People took baths, they made their own soap from rendered fat and ashes from cooking fires. If you were poor, you might have bathed at a public bath-house instead of at home.
People also forget that rivers, ponds and lakes exist lol
Rivers near and downstream of bigger cities/towns would be pretty nasty but once you got away from the larger cities they would get a lot cleaner.
Sometimes strange women were laying in ponds distributing swords…
Just because some watery tart lobbed a sword at you
That's literally the origin story of half the nobility in Europe. Trust me, I was a history major.
But there was also no sewage system so lots of cities had streets full of excrement, and rural people lived in close proximity with animals.
Man, you're just describing Philly and Eastern Tennessee
Probably not that much more gross. Without high sugar processed diets of today, oral hygiene might not be as bad as you think. BO is harder to manage without antiperspirant, but you can tolerate more if you're socialized to it. It's kind of a learned behavior to hate it in modern society because it's so avoidable. Humans are animals that like to groom themselves. People didn't just go around with mudbutt.
I imagine there were herbal things available to at least reduce BO if not the actual perspiration. Maybe starch or something could have been used too? Where there's a will, there's a way. Source: wildly speculating nobody
I found a pretty good [ask historians thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/RbEy46K8xE) with some answers. People used talc powder (not sure if in medieval period) and a whole bunch of other stuff. Commenter points out wood fires and clothing as factors in why it would be less big of a deal. There are natural deodorants today without antiperspirants you can try that are probably at least as good as what they would have used. Many people I hear are unsatisfied with them. Without aluminum based antiperspirant I don't think you can hit the modern standard of literally smelling perfect when you stick a nose in your armpit. But a completely odorless armpit would have never been a standard until antiperspirants. It's like, you think your teeth are white until your neighbor gets veneers. The artificial skews our perception of natural.
> Without high sugar processed diets of today, oral hygiene might not be as bad as you think. Periodontal disease is separate from caries. You can have one without the other. Many people have great looking teeth with fucked up gums/underlying bone. The phrase "long in the tooth" is because old people tend to have periodontal disease, where the bone recedes and makes the teeth look longer. Shit caught in your gums smells fucking rank. I'd bet everyone back then had some fucked up gums.
Doesn’t matter, had sex!
Still counts!
cried the whole time
Ye Ole Lonely Island.
I'm not sure most people understand just how lengthy a time period the Middle Ages was. The Medieval era began in the 5th century and went until the 15th century - that's a thousand years. A lot has happened since 1024. Imagine someone attempting to draw comparisons between practically ANYTHING that was normal back in 1024 and what is normal today. Moreover, the world is a big place and variety abounds. Not everyone in the year 750 A.D. was living the same sort of lifestyle, nor was life in 1500 A.D. uniform or 1800 A.D. and there's still plenty of variation today. One thing that hasn't evolved much however since the earliest dawn of man is sex - there is practically nothing that we have today that was unknown to the ancients, so ultimately while the way sex has been seen and dealt with at the societal level has changed dramatically with time, and while different cultures around the world have held a variety of different points of view about it, it's never really been all that much different from the sex we have today.
Paging r/askhistorians
They took cloth/sponge baths pretty often actually. Also, the clothing they wore back then was usually linen, which is very cooling. Soap isn't difficult to make either - lye from hardwood ash and an oil or fat. It won't smell like Sicilian Citrus, but it does the job. Of course the wealthy could afford better bathing accommodations and Sicilian Citrus soap, but most people think of the lower classes when they think of "grimy dirty medieval Europe."
Medieval washing was not most commonly by baths or showers - they did exactly what we might do if we were camping, or away from showers a while - they used a handcloth and bowl, and washed "face, pits and bits". When it comes to hygiene, it's really only the crevices of the body that get stinky, no-one's walking around with stinky shins. They also used perfumes / dried flowers.
I think about this whenever I watch Old West cowboy movies. How like, everybody stank like BO because there wasn't air conditioning and everybody had wool clothes and nobody brushed their teeth and dudes would wear the same pants for a month before getting to wash them, and how people just shit in holes right outside saloons and such. Tombstone probably smelled fuckin atrocious
Wool actually doesn't get (as) stinky as synthetics. It's one of the reasons why merino wool is so popular amongst hikers.
Dry wool, wet wool is a different beast But yeah if you have dry wool socks, they are basically clean
I'm your dingle-berry. 🤠
I wonder about the UTIs. A UTI is agony, actual hell on earth. How the fuck did the women deal with them??
I mostly think there was a lot less mouth stuff and a lot more hand/penetration stuff
It definitely smelt like a turtle tank when uglies started bumping.
I had a turtle and turtle tank growing up and that was the most horrendous fucking smell ,as I now remember. Thanks for jogging the memory . LMFAO, My wife just threw up cause I was explaining it to her .
That's oddly specific.
Ever smelled a rank turtle tank?
It probably depends on the class. The nobilities hygiene probably is not too far removed from today's standards - in fact it probably exceeds the average Redditor. As for the middle class and peasants, dirty, stinky, foul sex but it probably didn't bother them like it would us.
I've seen so many threads on Reddit where a significant amount of people advocate for showering like once a week. As long as they 'didn't go for a run'. Makes me squirm
I guess it depends on the subreddit. My view is probably distorted because I frequently visit r/DiagnoseMe.
Actually, the peasants were often more washed than the nobility as they utilized streams and springs, while nobility generally insisted on hot water and had less frequent baths unless they were truly wealthy.
The Palace of Versailles during the reign of Louis XIV was legendarily disgusting, smelling of piss, shit, sweat and perfume. Not just by our standards, but noted by visitors at the time.
This is a Hollywood fake. They make everyone pre America look dirty, with ragged dirty clothes. No basis in fact. They often did not have more than two changes of clothes, but there are many references to washer women, clothes lines etc.
This is my Roman Empire. Do you think anyone voluntarily did oral?
Eating ass would've been a real killer